30 Carats

I did eventually wear my gold 30s dress to my friend's 30th birthday party, and again to our Christmas eve church service, because at Christmas it just seems right to dress a bit fancier. This post will mostly be photos, with the odd note. Construction details are here and here.

I experimented with creating a set for the photoshoot, rather than trying to find a spot in my house, and it worked so well – much more conducive to creativity. The portrait on the wall is of my grandmother as a child in the 30s.

I think I got pretty close to my original design, but it wouldn't hurt if the hip ruching stood out a little more.

For going out, I wore the dress with a white velour coat I made, maybe 10 years ago. It is not at all historical, but the shape and general impression were inspired by a coat in a Lucille Ball movie. I had used pearl clip-on earrings as a fake clasp and found that I could also use them to clip the coat to my neckline, so it would stay where it was most flattering.

Given the timey times we live in, a matching mask is a must for any fashionable outfit. I adapted my standard mask pattern to have ruching to match the dress.

... Is very gold

Let me explain what's going on here:
a)    This is the front skirt. At least, the thin wedge is. The stretched hexagon it's attached to is the ruched waistband
b)    Lining for the ruched front
c)    Back skirt
d)    Ruched front
e)    Unruched front
f )    Back

Everything is angled for bias, which gets a bit awkward once you've corrupted a pattern so much the grainline is more of a grain-angle.

The semi-circle is only there as a guide for the moment. I had done a test layout of the circles and estimated that they might take 8m which suddenly made my generous 10m of chiffon look positively constricting. The line across the fabric is marking out the 2m point so I didn't go much past it. My estimate ended up being exaggerated, so fear not, I didn't run out of fabric at this time.

I sewed the dress together before cutting the circle just in case something went wrong and I needed to re-cut a piece or two, because, if I really needed to, I could probably manage with slightly less than 2.5 circles in the skirt.

The back and unruched front pieces serve as a kind of foundation, and the other pieces are sewn onto them rather than meeting at seam allowances. I found the mere thought of trying to chalk this fabric distressing, so decided to try basting my guideline instead. This worked wonderfully and is a technique I will absolutely be using on future projects. I sewed through my paper patterns and fabric pieces on the marked lines with long stitches and then cut the stitches so I could remove the paper while leaving the thread in the fabric.

Here is the ruching sewn to the lining with tacking to show where that should meet the other front.

Figuring out the sewing order was a puzzle in its own right. The back top and back skirt went together fine – this seam is hidden under the ruching. To join the fronts, I bound the edge of the unruched side and placed it over the ruching. I then hand-sewed them together, with a row of stitches on each edge of the binding. It seemed easier and neater than trying to control it through the machine.

The next step was the long side seam on the skirt. I finished the edges of the waist ruching with Hong Kong binding so it was ready to be draped into place. The front skirt has a small slit in the seam allowance so it can fold out of the seam once it reaches the ruching. The unruched bodice also goes in this seam.

Pause again for another interlude of handsewing to attach the waist ruching. This time the easiest way was on the dressform. Then, finally, the second side seam could be sewn.

Then I cut and sewed the 5 semi-circles and embarked on handsewing the roughly 13m of rolled hem.

All that glitters…

When I design dresses, I usually start my drawing on top of a person outline I copied from a how-to-draw book: a basic, standing straight, facing the front, 7 heads tall, two heads wide kinda deal. At some point (probably in a high school textiles class) I was given a page of 'fashion figures', outlines of wispy ladies leaning this way and that, with legs at least a third longer that your average human. I do not understand these. One of the great woes of art is that the thing you end up with never quite reaches the glory of what you imagined – so why would you start your design even further in the realm of the impossible?

Even so, one day I thought I'd try out these figures, and drew myself a 1930s style evening dress.

I decided I didn't like the figure but I did like the dress, and thereon kept an eye out for gold lamé. I eventually found a Very Shiny gold chiffon while shopping in Cabramatta. I knew I would need a lot, but at $4 per metre I could afford to give myself a good margin. I bought 10 metres of fabric and a coordinating thread and Hong Kong binding – a dark khaki that disappeared into the gold perfectly.

Time Passed. This year, the dress filtered to the top of the 'potential project' pile in my mind. A couple of friends had weddings coming up, which a floor length bright gold dress would be Wildly Inappropriate for, but I was also invited to a 30th birthday at a speakeasy-style bar and that made a good goal for a 1930s dress.

I started with a couple of decisions, one being to omit the cape so I could wear a jacket. The other was to make the waist ruching part of the skirt piece instead of a separate sash – mostly to make the patternmaking more interesting.

To make the pattern, I first tried to drape the kind of look I wanted onto my dress form, but that didn't get me what I wanted. Then, I decided to do an initial flat pattern and drape from there. Of course, when making a woven evening gown, the obvious starting point is a pattern for a knit pyjama top (what?) – but it worked.

My steps were:

1. Making a tunic with the right fit
2. Dividing the front into the two panels
3. Expanding the smaller panel to allow for ruching

I started by doing cut and spread. Given that I wanted the ruching to lead back to the shoulder seam, I ended up with very fine cuts. This didn't give enough ruching, so after experimenting some more with the mock-up, I lengthened the pattern at some points down the body.

 

For the skirt, I started with Style 1353. I cut a back and a front, and mirrored the top halves to be all across the hips while allowing sufficient fabric for shaping later. I also left a lot of fabric above where the pattern ends on the front piece to use for the ruching. Once mocked-up, I took the skirt side seam in a fair bit, as this part of the dress is meant to be not so flowy.

 

Then I took it apart and updated my pattern. The back and front ruching sections are on the front skirt pattern, so the ruching goes around without a seam, while the skirt does have a seam.

The flowy part of the skirt I mocked up in miniature so I could see how the circle pieces would behave without using huge amounts of fabric. There are two of these spirals to go along the diagonal edges of the skirt and a semicircle between them on the long side.

With all my pieces worked out, it's time to cut.

I can wear evening dresses all day if I want to

As it’s now the season for wearing summer dresses, I thought I would blog about some. I have made a series of dresses from the pattern for a 1929-30 Vionnet evening dress on page 78 in Patterns of Fashion 2. When scaling the pattern I made it slightly more slimline than the original because the original was sheer and worn belted over a petticoat, whereas mine would only be one layer.

It’s a weird dress to make. I’ve found it easiest to describe the skirt as an 8-sided square, although four of the sides are slightly longer than the other four.  The bodice side seams are only about 3.5” long.  This was the first pattern I started hand-hemming, because the satins would look awful otherwise. By the end of it I was very experienced, as each dress has around 10 metres of hem.

I can't decide whether this reminds me more of an octopus or a starfish...

At the beginning it was difficult to work out where all the skirt pieces fitted together and how they fitted onto the bodice. I have now made five versions of this dress.  The first time round I sewed all the skirt pieces together, then made the bodice, and then tried to combine the two. It was a pain to sew all those angles into each other and the resultant seams don’t sit well. In the later versions I started by attaching each skirt piece separately onto its respective bodice piece then sewing the completed dress front to the completed dress back.  This worked much better.

 My first version of this dress was made from a satin fabric with a variegated turquoise and mauve diagonal pattern. I had been looking for a bright print satin but could find  none, so this was a compromise.  I wore it to my friend’s 16th birthday supper.  

The bias-cut bodice is kind of odd to wear – you move your shoulder and the fabric pulls on your opposite hip.

I never quite understood what the pattern intended for the shoulder drapes so I made my own drapes by cutting out spirals of fabric using pinking shears;  I then sewed the spirals on at the shoulders. I also did this for the next two versions of this dress I made. These were gifts for my cousins.  To make their dresses I needed to adjust the original pattern not just for size but also for dimension and body shape. Because the girls live interstate, I made a variety of mock-up bodices that I posted to them so they could each pick the best fit.

My school friends decided to arrange a summer picnic at the end of the year I was making these dresses. The dress code was ‘dresses or button-shirts’.  I could have re-worn the dress from the 16th birthday but, even though it was summer, the Canberra weather was still a bit too cool for that. So, obviously, I needed a new dress.

Spot the camouflaged bolero.

I found some lovely I-have-no-idea-what-it-is fabric at Spotlight. It had a bright and blocky pattern and would be warmer than the satin. On the day before the picnic I made myself a second dress using this pattern and, to go with it, I made a bolero from Style 2302.

Sourced from my mother’s pattern stash.

On the morning of the picnic I machine-hemmed the eight-sided skirt and trimmed a straw hat to match (which has since been untrimmed). I was one of the few at the picnic who had decided to brave the weather in a dress; however I learnt the hard way that this skirt is difficult to control in the wind.

Or, alternatively, that it spins well.

I had wanted a bright print satin for this dress when I had made my first one so I was never entirely happy with the variegated fabric, so when I found some blue and green patterned satin it seemed like a good reason to make another one.  This time I added sleeves.

The sleeves are squares of fabric with the armhole shape cut out diagonally below centre.

All of the dresses have different skirt length and slightly different necklines. When cutting the pattern I initially cut the fabric straight along the shoulder seam line and then chose the neckline afterwards and shaped it while trying it on.

I don’t think I cut this neckline at all.

My first attempt at this dress is now a summer house dress. Because I can wear a satin 1930s Vionnet evening dress around the house during the day if I want to!